I made a suggestion for British Sharpshooters before Rangers were added and some people were losing their minds about that so I guess their approach is to appease that crowd.
But at this point, the cat’s out of the bag and they should get rid of the weird replacement thing. They should be concurrent with Longbows and available by default in age 4 (just like Pavisiers and Bersagliere).
They should probably nerf Longbows a little and buff Rangers to make the transition justified. I think the Yeomen card should give them the promotion ability instead of extra range and the imperial Longbow upgrade could be nixed.